


Kintsugi

by madsthenerdygirl



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Lucy Realizes She Could Have Had a Threesome with Lorena and Flynn and Regrets Everything, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Widows AU, Wyatt Logan's Bisexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 00:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19284208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: Kintsugi means “golden joinery” and is a Japanese art form where broken pieces of pottery are repaired by sealing them back up together with lacquer that’s been mixed with gold.See also: the idea that one must acknowledge and find beauty in what is broken, rather than hiding or ignoring it.





	Kintsugi

Flynn knew something was wrong.

Long before the Jess and Lorena yanked Noah into the van, bleeding out as Emma demanded what the fuck was going on, long before the warehouse was surrounded, long before the van exploded.

He was checking Iris’s closet for monsters with a water pistol, and he just… knew.

Something was wrong.

He tucked Iris in bed, kissed her, made sure she was comfy, and left the nightlight on as he closed the door and walked into the living room of the high rise.

He knew the rules: no contact, not until Lorena reached out to him first. Everything was probably fine.

Until it wasn’t.

“Papa?”

“Hmm?” Flynn pulled himself out of the insurance papers—the life insurance papers, the ones he’d thought he’d never have to look at, not for years and years—and looked at his daughter.

Iris wasn’t even six yet. She looked so much like her mother, with Lorena’s wide cheeks, soft light brown eyes. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

Ah, shit. Flynn reached down and pulled her up into his lap. “No, _moja mala draga_. I’ll always be right here with you.”

 

* * *

 

Lucy paced back and forth.

“We’ll figure something out,” Amy said, her voice soft and buoyant, filled, as always, with impossible hope.

Lucy shook her head. “We needed this, we _needed_ this for Mom. And now—now the funeral bills… Christ you can’t even afford to die in this country.”

Amy looked down at her lap, then around them at the hospital, the nurse’s station, making sure nobody was close enough to overhear. “Lucy… what was Noah really doing?”

“You don’t want to know.” She knew only the basics. Never the details. In case the police came. “Oh, God, and the wedding—I have to cancel—oh God I hope they don’t want to be paid—”

Amy frowned. “Lucy, was Noah… I mean he always said he was a consultant, did you—this is all shady, right?”

Lucy stopped pacing and took a deep breath. “Listen to me carefully. Before Noah proposed to me, he told me some things. I don’t know much. But he wanted me to know what I was getting into before I agreed to marry him. And what I know, I cannot tell you, okay?”

“But what if you’re in danger!” Amy hissed.

“I’m not, all right? I wasn’t—I don’t know enough to be in danger.”

It was the first time she’d lied to her sister in years.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt felt his nerves jangling as he entered the building.

It was fine. Dave ran the group. He knew Dave, he trusted Dave.

“Logan.” David Baumgardner grinned at him as Wyatt eased carefully into the room. “I thought you preferred one on one.”

“Yeah, well, after—uh—” Wyatt cleared his throat. “Jess was the real breadwinner, y’know. Couldn’t afford our insurance after she… yeah.”

Dave nodded. “You know who did it?”

Wyatt shook his head.

Dave paused, setting down the pamphlets he was distributing on the table. “Y’know, man, out of the two of you, I thought you would’ve been the one to become a bank robber.”

Wyatt snorted. “You obviously didn’t know Jess that well.”

Wyatt had always been the one who’d followed orders, even if it was to his detriment. Jess?

Jess had been a hurricane since day one.

 

* * *

 

The call arrived a month after the funeral. From Brazil, of all places, very sorry to bother _signor_ but the bank account registered in his wife’s name had not been paid, if he could…?

Flynn didn’t know anything about Lorena having a bank account in São Paulo. Lorena had tried to walk a delicate balance between shielding him and entrusting him with information in case things went wrong, but surely something like an out-of-country bank account was important enough to tell him about.

The contents, once he got them, were very simple. A leather-bound journal. He recognized the name inside: Lucy Preston.

She’d been Noah’s fiancée, hadn’t she?

Inside were…

Plans.

 _Good_ plans. All the heists, written down and mapped out, bank vaults, private homes, corporate offices, detailed all the way down to where the house plants were and how to account for slight slopes in the floor.

Lorena had been the mastermind, the planner. Noah had been the safecracker. Jess had been the hitter, the muscle. Lorena had told him once that Jess had told her, drunk off their asses in a bar after a good run, that she’d had her first hit when she was a teen, running over her husband’s—then-boyfriend’s—abusive father.

There was also their getaway driver, Karl, but Karl had actually been out sick the night of the heist, lucky break. Whoever the poor sonofabitch who’d died in the driver’s seat was, Flynn didn’t know them.

But if Lorena was the planner, why did she have a bunch of plans drawn up by Noah’s fiancée? Lucy Preston, a quick internet search showed, was a history professor.

Flynn flipped through the journal, and a piece of paper fell out the back. He picked it up.

It was from Lorena.

 

_My darling,_

_If you’re reading this then, well. I’m sure you know where that sentence is headed. Here you’ll find the heists drawn up by my apprentice. I feel odd saying that, since she’s only eight years younger than we are. I’ve been training her the last year._

_With Iris getting older, and your security firm lifting off as soon as we have enough capital… I didn’t want to jeopardize any of that. I wanted out of the game. But you can’t just retire. Not in this world. Lucy was going to replace me. She has a real flair for it._

_If I’m dead, and you’re reading this, then you must know you’re probably in danger. You’re probably short of cash. And that’s where this journal comes in._

_Lucy designed a heist on her own, it’s on the last few pages. It’s risky, but if you can pull it off, you’ll have enough to start the firm, put Iris in a good school, pay off our debts. Scrub yourself clean._

_You’re brilliant. I know you’ll figure out the rest._

_I love you. I love Iris. I love you both. I love you so much._

_~L_

* * *

 

Lucy entered the diner, unsure of where to sit. She knew of Noah’s associates but she’d never met any of them, especially not any of their spouses.

There was a dark blond man snoozing in a booth wearing a dark green jacket. His eyes cracked open when she entered, and he gave her a lazy smirk before closing them again.

The door opened behind her, letting in the cold wind, the bell overhead tinkling. Lucy jumped as she felt a large hand on her shoulder.

“Miss Preston?”

She looked up—and up. The man was tall. And rather handsome. It startled her. She had expected… she didn’t know. Lorena’s husband was trying to start up a security firm. Ironically enough. Although, having Lorena’s inside knowledge of how robbers did their thing would probably have helped him win over clients. She’d thought maybe he’d be someone, well, shorter for a start, a little nerdy looking, glasses, not… not the Croatian James Bond.

“Garcia Flynn?” she asked.

He nodded. “I see Wyatt’s already here.”

He led her over to the guy napping in the booth, who sat up straight once Lucy and Flynn joined him. “Flynn. Ma’am.”

“We’re the same age,” Lucy replied, sitting down across from him. “Is there not a fourth person?”

“Karl wanted to sit this one out,” Flynn said. “He’s decided he was probably the planned target and so skipping town for a while was the smart choice. He’s visiting his brother in Portland.”

“All of Lorena’s heists were designed for four people,” Lucy said. “We need a driver.”

“I’m your driver,” Wyatt said. “My dad used to drive me out into the backwoods with our car until it broke down, sat down with a six pack and made me fix it. I can drive anything.”

“Then we need a third man inside.”

Wyatt squinted at her. “How do you know so much about all this?”

Lucy felt her face flushing. “How come you’re so willing to jump in and do a heist after what happened to Jess?”

“Do you know how hard it is to get a job as a vet that doesn’t involve murder? Why do you want to be involved?”

“My mother’s dying of cancer,” Lucy said bluntly. “I can’t afford hospice on my own. And now that—now that—some of the wedding deposits are non-refundable. I have to pay those.”

“And you know so much about the heists because…?” Wyatt challenged.

Flynn pulled out—

“That’s my journal,” Lucy blurted out, as Flynn set it on the table.

“Yes.” Flynn looked at her. “I appreciate you not trying to play dumb.”

“I…” Lucy swallowed. Glanced at Wyatt. Looked at Flynn. “I feel rather set up here.”

Flynn arched an eyebrow at her. Lucy glared at him, then looked at Wyatt. The asshole might be handsome but he was also ruthless. “Lorena was training me. She came over to our house once to discuss something with Noah, that’s how I found out that my fiancé wasn’t actually a consultant. I… I felt rather… trapped, in my life. With the way my mom… anyway. Learning how to plan a heist—it was never supposed to be real, it was just—an exercise, something fun, I never thought…”

“You any good?” Wyatt asked.

Amy was always telling her to stand up for herself more. “Yes. Yes, I am. I’m very good. Lorena said I could be the best.” She paused, then looked at Flynn. “She was… wonderful.”

Truth be told, she’d had a bit of a crush on Lorena.

“From the way I see it,” Flynn said, “we all needed that job to work. We all have bills to pay. There’s a heist in here, and it’s a good one. We could pull it off, the three of us.”

“I planned the heist for four,” Lucy insisted. “I can’t redo it for three.”

“Where would we even get a fourth person?” Wyatt snapped. “Who could we possibly trust?”

Not Amy. She wouldn’t put Amy in danger like that.

A strange look passed over Flynn’s face. “I know someone,” he said. “My babysitter. She’s looked after Iris for years, she’s practically family. And I know she needs the money. She wants to go to CalTech for her masters.”

“My sister could watch your daughter,” Lucy blurted out. “Amy, she’s great, twenty-seven, kids love her.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Wyatt said, leaning forward and jabbing his finger into the table. “I don’t know either of you two from Adam, okay? How can I trust that this won’t go as badly as the last heist did? I’d actually like to stay alive, thanks.”

“And I don’t want to leave my daughter an orphan,” Flynn hissed. “I checked this plan, it’s airtight.”

“No plan is airtight,” Wyatt retorted. “Who would we be hitting, anyway?”

Flynn looked at Lucy, nodding at her. Deferring to her.

Huh. She found that—she liked that.

She looked at Wyatt. “We’d be hitting my cousin. Nicholas Keynes.”

 

* * *

 

Jiya opened the door already crouched down. “I smell a delicious little stegosaurus!” she growled.

There was a shriek from Iris and then she darted behind the couch, giggling.

“Mmm, just what a hungry velociraptor needs,” Jiya said, stalking through the apartment, growling and snarling.

Iris shrieked again as Jiya ran after her, scooping her up and tickling her.

Flynn emerged from the bedroom, dressed all in black. Jiya set Iris down. “I thought you’d have already left,” she said.

“I had, uh, a proposition for you,” Flynn said, leaning against the doorway.

Jiya’s father had died a few years ago, and her mother had gone back to Lebanon. She’d meant to take this babysitting job just once, but she’d fallen in love with Iris. And then, somehow, she’d started having dinner with Lorena and Flynn, telling them of her hopes and dreams, getting coffee with Lorena, letting Flynn help her with her application to CalTech.

She’d been the one holding Iris while Flynn was a pallbearer at the funeral.

“Shoot,” Jiya said, as Iris scrambled to grab her coloring book and show Jiya something.

Flynn sighed. “You’ll want to sit down for this.”

Twenty minutes later, Jiya thought her jaw was never going to stop hanging open. “You’re—and Lorena—but—and that’s how—but you—”

Flynn stared at her silently.

Jiya scrubbed at her face. “What—what would you even need me for?”

“We have a driver, and I’m the bodyguard. We have our mastermind. You’d be helping to haul the cash.”

“Cash? This is _cash_ we’re hauling?”

“The target has been laundering money for years through his political schemes, he’s only the latest in the family to do it. Trust me, it’s a sure thing.”

Jiya frowned. “What about getting past security? Is this stored in a vault of some kind? Are any of you safecrackers?”

“Why, are you?”

Jiya knew she was on a knife’s edge. Her mother would be ashamed of her if she knew what she was considering. But on the other hand, CalTech wasn’t cheap, and she trusted Flynn. He and Lorena and Iris were the only family she’d had for years. And if this was a bad person…

“I’m not. But remember that guy I told you about?”

“The _Star Wars_ fan who’s been failing to ask you out for months?”

“Yeah. I think I can get him in.”

 

* * *

 

Someday, Rufus was going to stop letting his massive crush on Jiya make him do stupid things.

But Jiya didn’t know Mason like Rufus did. Mason offering to pay for Rufus to go through MIT was one thing, he’d known the guy since he was fifteen. Mason offering to pay for Jiya’s CalTech? Not so much. Even with an agreement of a job offer afterwards. Jiya was used to paying her own way and Rufus respected that.

And, well, Rufus couldn’t say no to sticking it to another awful system-abusing white man.

“You’ll be safe,” Jiya promised him. “And you’ll get a cut.”

 _I don’t need a cut,_ Rufus wanted to tell her. But that would mean revealing more of his feelings. And Jiya was—he didn’t know how to tell her, how to express, how—she was radiant.

He couldn’t mess up their friendship. Not for stupid feelings he knew she wouldn’t return.

“I trust you,” he told her instead. “If you vouch for these guys, then we’re good.”

 

* * *

 

Wyatt pointed the gun at Lucy.

It was unloaded, his finger off the trigger, safety on—all precautions in place—and his heart still hammered in his chest as the barrel pointed straight at her face.

“Now,” Flynn said.

Lucy grabbed the gun from Wyatt, twisting her wrist to wrench it out of his grasp, flipping it around and pointing it at him.

“Good,” Flynn said, as Wyatt dropped into a fight stance. “It’s out of ammo.”

Lucy flipped the gun around and used it like a club, crashing it towards Wyatt’s temple. Wyatt grabbed her wrist, bending it and forcing her to drop the gun.

Lucy jabbed him under the arm with her free hand, then in the throat, then went for his groin.

“No,” Flynn instructed, his voice a low growl.

Wyatt wished she’d actually hit him in the nuts so that his dick wouldn’t be able to betray him and twitch like that.

Flynn was—Wyatt didn’t even know what to say that Flynn was. A hardass. A task master. A clever son of a bitch. Too snarky for his own good, too smart for his own good, too handsome for his own good, too magnetic for his own good.

_His own good, or yours?_

Wyatt shook his head like there was water in his ears. He wasn’t—he didn’t—not men, and especially not Flynn.

“You aren’t here to beat the shit out of him,” Flynn told Lucy. “You’re here for the money. So you get in a blow to incapacitate him, and then you run. Eyes on the prize.”

Lucy pushed her hair back from where wisps of it had started to stick to her forehead from sweat. “Again,” Flynn said.

Lucy glared at him but handed the gun back to Wyatt. He wanted to take a break too, honestly, or just quit for the day, but he’d been in strategic operations plenty of times in Delta. You had to practice until it was in your bones, until it was instinct. And while he and Flynn had combat training, Lucy didn’t.

Wyatt could admit to himself—he had a bit of a crush on Lucy. An instinct to protect her. The more he learned about her, the more he regretted his initial suspicions. She was smart, clearly, but she was also shouldering far more burdens then she deserved. Her job, plus her mother, and now—now having to tell everyone that her wedding was off because her fiancé was murdered and having to lie about how it happened, having to call up the florist and the cake maker and all the rest and tell them not to bother, and to then deal with everyone’s horrid pity when she was finished.

“Mom wanted to see me married before she died,” Lucy had admitted a few nights ago, after they’d finished a test run to Flynn’s satisfaction (not that Flynn was ever fully satisfied, the perfectionist bastard). “I wouldn’t have pushed the wedding so soon or made it so big. I was thinking, why don’t we just do something small, and then go to Europe? Just a handful of us, on the beach, won’t that be lovely? But Mom’s so traditional. And I didn’t mind doing it for her. She was too sick to be… you know… normally she would have been controlling everything but she was too sick so I was actually in charge and I liked that. And now I have to go home and wait for the RSVP cards to arrive that we ordered so I can throw them into the recycling. We spent days picking just the right cards.”

If Lucy cried about it, about anything, she didn’t let Wyatt and Flynn see it. She just showed up every night after teaching classes all day, after spending time with her dying mother and her sister, and practiced hand to hand combat, running with a fifty-pound weight on her back, and firing a gun.

Wyatt dared anyone not to get a crush on her after seeing all of that.

“I think we’re good for now,” Flynn said, taking the gun from Lucy after she’d disarmed Wyatt again. Lucy nodded, and Wyatt could see the circles under her eyes.

Flynn must have seen them too because his voice gentled, got soft the way that it only ever did with Lucy. “Why don’t you head on home.”

“And let you two do all the work?” Lucy snorted. “No, I don’t think so.”

Flynn looked like he was biting back something. “Because having you dead on your feet is helpful to us,” he said sarcastically “We’re supposed to be meeting Jiya’s friend tonight, so why don’t you crash on the couch until they get here?”

Lucy eyed him, as if she was trying to figure out if she should respond to the sarcasm or not. Flynn held out a water bottle, shaking it a little as if that would make it more enticing, and did that eyebrow-waggle thing that made Wyatt’s stomach flip.

Lucy took the water bottle, then poked Flynn in the chest. “I’m not going to break.”

“On the contrary,” Flynn said. “You’re the strongest person here.”

Lucy blinked, clearly taken aback, and Wyatt saw her cheeks get pink. “I—well. Fine.” She turned and walked off to the corner of the warehouse where they actually had some furniture, then sat on the couch, drinking the water.

Wyatt tensed as Flynn took a step towards him, his palms sweating a little, his head buzzing. Flynn made… shit happen, all right? Inside. But it wasn’t. He didn’t.

Ugh.

“You trust this guy?” Wyatt asked. “The one Jiya’s bringing?”

“He’s practically her boyfriend even if he’s apparently too chickenshit to actually ask her out.”

“And boyfriends never turn on girlfriends, right.”

“I trust Jiya, and I trust Jiya’s judgment.” Flynn eyed him, and Wyatt felt like layers were being mentally peeled off of him—although not in a sexual way.

…he didn’t want it to be in a sexual way.

…did he?

“You getting enough sleep?” Flynn asked.

Wyatt chuckled, the sound scraping in his throat like shards of glass. “No.” He paused. “Y’know Jess was always the one… I was the good guy, and she liked it that way. I kept offering to get involved, I even did a little moonshine running back in Texas when I was a teen, but she—everyone always thought I was too protective of her and I could be, man, I could be a jealous piece of shit but it was the other way around. She was the one always protecting me, ever since we were kids. And now… I’m doing the one thing she’d hate me doing. Getting involved in a heist. Wrong side of the law. After all she did to make sure I didn’t have to.”

Flynn looked at him for a long moment, until Wyatt thought he might start to squirm under the intensity of Flynn’s gaze. “You could stay at my place, if you wanted. I could use another pair of eyes on Iris and I’m not sleeping too much either.”

“I thought you liked Lucy,” Wyatt blurted out.

Flynn frowned. “What?”

“I thought—you look at her like—you know.”

Flynn glanced over at the couch, where sure enough Lucy was now draped over the arm and dead asleep, water bottle forgotten on the ground. “Once… Lorena told me about this girl. Described her to me, and said, if she was single, I would’ve brought her home for us right then, you’d love her, Garcia. I didn’t realize the girl was Lucy until I met her.”

Wyatt’s eyebrows shot up. “Didn’t know Lorena was into…”

Flynn nodded. “We met at a bar on Pride.”

Ahh.

“Not that we just… invited people home. I knew whoever this girl was, if Lorena said that, she meant it in a more… let’s try something that could be permanent, kind of way.” Flynn rolled his eyes, but the gesture was clearly meant at himself. “What I’m trying to say is, I can have feelings for more than one person at the same time, and nothing I do can bring Lorena back and she was always telling me to stop brooding over the past and to embrace the present, the future, and I want… I want Iris to have more than just me for a family again.”

“I’m not into men,” Wyatt blurted out.

Flynn raised an eyebrow at him. “Logan, I’ve seen you look at my ass. You’re definitely into men.”

Wyatt had no fucking clue what to say to that, besides maybe try his hardest to induce a heart attack and die on the spot, but then the door was opening and Jiya was entering and they had a distraction anyway.

 

* * *

 

Someone was gently shaking her awake. “Lucy.”

She knew that voice and turned lazily towards it. Nobody else said her name like he did, drawing out the middle part. Made her name sound special.

“Lucy, hey, time to wake up.”

She felt the hand shift, could feel the heat of it as it hovered right over her cheek, like he wanted to brush her hair behind her ear or stroke her cheek but wasn’t sure if he could.

Lucy opened her eyes, and the hand retreated.

Flynn looked down at her, his eyes unbearably soft. He was so… so soft, how had it taken her so long to notice?

“Did I fall asleep again?” she whispered.

“It’s okay. We were just going over Wyatt’s escape route for the van.”

Wyatt and Flynn. Flynn and Wyatt. For three months now she’d watched them spar together, bend over plans together, bicker and argue and sometimes outright fight.

Noah had been a good man. She’d cared for him deeply. But Lucy had always been waiting for the day she’d wake up and feel that spark, that melting feeling in her chest, that helpless, _oh it’s you_ feeling.

She never had.

Now Wyatt would rub her back after a long day and she’d think, _oh it’s you_. And then Flynn would bring her coffee and she’d think, _oh it’s you_.

Or she’d see their heads swaying close together as they discussed something about the security on the Keynes house and she’d go, _oh. Oh._

A few times, Lorena had joked with her. “You ever get tired of Noah, come on over to my place, Garcia and I would show you a real fun time.”

Lucy had always laughed, because Lorena was the smartest woman she’d ever met, gentle but firm in her teaching, with an easy smile and an easy demeanor and she’d been gorgeous, and Lucy had never known how much Lorena had been joking and how much she’d been serious and she’d felt bad for even wanting, even for a moment, when Noah was so good to her.

Now her fiancé was dead three months and she was looking at not one but two men, one of them the husband of the woman who had mentored her, and she was wanting for a lot longer than just one moment.

“You’re burning the candle at both ends,” Flynn said, handing her some coffee and sitting next to her on the couch.

“Like you aren’t doing the same. Just because you don’t let us see it doesn’t mean we don’t know you’re struggling just as much,” Lucy pointed out. She couldn’t even imagine what raising a kid right now felt like.

Flynn looked embarrassed. “I miss her. Every day. But I’m… trying to live how she would’ve wanted me to.”

“She was amazing,” Lucy blurted out. “She—she really—she believed in me the way—nobody ever has. Besides my sister. I feel like—like the rest of my life is just this big struggle for control and I’m always losing that struggle but not with her. She was—I always thought, it must’ve been a really great guy to marry a woman like that.”

Flynn’s cheeks went pink. Lucy look down at a spot on the floor, shame overwhelming her. The man was grieving and she’d practically admitted her crush on his dead wife.

“She liked you,” Flynn said quietly. “I didn’t know it was you at the time. But she did.”

Lucy found her vision blurring. “Oh God.” She quickly wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry she was your _wife_ , and I’m crying and I’m—I’m sorry—”

Slowly, like she was an animal he thought he might spook, Flynn reached over and gently wrapped his hand over hers. Lucy’s head tipped forward, somehow, and then it was resting on Flynn’s shoulder, and she was crying and staining his shirt, and Flynn’s cheek was pressed to her hair and his hand was large and warm around hers and she felt shattered and safe all at once.

 

* * *

 

 

Wyatt was drunk.

He didn't mean to be. It just. Sometimes it happened.

Flynn found him taking useless swings at the punching bag in the warehouse, the one Lucy had been practicing wailing on for months.

"How do you stand it?" he slurred. "How do you fucking stand it, knowing—you should've told her you loved her, you should've been more patient, you shouldn't've been so jealous, you should've—been fuckin' better—"

A hint of a Texan drawl came out when Wyatt was drunk. He hated it. Hated Texas, hated home, hated all of it except Jess.

Flynn caught Wyatt's hands. Took one look at the bruised and bleeding knuckles and got out the first aid kit. "I don't stand it," he replied, putting antiseptic on Wyatt's hands. Large hands. Flynn had nice large hands. Long fingers. All of Flynn was long. "That's why I want to do better with the people I still have. With Jiya, with my daughter. Called my brother the other day, first time in two years. I can't go back in time and I can't undo what happened. But I can do better with what I have now."

Flynn had pretty eyes. Wyatt tried to reach out, to feel the color of them, but all he ended up doing was poking Flynn in the cheek.

"Hold still," Flynn told him.

"I don't have anyone 'cept you n' Lucy," Wyatt told him. "An' after this job I won't have you two either."

"You'll still have me," Flynn said mildly. "If you want me."

"Shh," Wyatt told him. "You can't say that out loud. People don't like that." People like his dad.

"What do you like, Wyatt, that's all that matters." Flynn finished bandaging one hand and switched to the other. "Lucky you're the driver, busted up hands like these. Look, you can stand there cursing the dark or you can light a candle. Your choice."

Wyatt poked Flynn's cheek again. "Can't tell who's prettier, you or Lucy. Pretty. I think—I think I want you to set—you set things on fire. Me on fire. If you set the fire I'll—I'll sit next to it 'stead of bein' in the dark."

"I'm sure you think that's very poetic," Flynn replied. "And you're lucky that you're cute."

"Cute enough to fuck?" Wyatt asked, and that was when he passed out.

 

* * *

 

Keynes was home.

He wasn’t supposed to be.

They were on the second stairwell, Rufus and Lucy, and then a gun was being pointed at them and Flynn couldn’t get to them fast enough—

Lucy reached for Keynes’ gun, but Rufus shoved her out of the way just as Keynes fired.

Rufus went stumbling back, and Lucy snatched the gun from Keynes, flipping it over neatly and pistol whipping him with it.

Flynn had cleared the stairs by that point and caught Rufus as he started to fall. “What happened?” Jiya called up the stairs, already on the first floor.

Flynn yanked the bag of money off of Rufus’s back, shouldering it. “Rufus has been hit, come get him.”

Jiya made a sound like something had been ripped out of her and she dashed up the stairs, grabbing Rufus. “He needs a hospital!”

“Get him to the van. Lucy and I can handle the money.”

Jiya got Rufus’s arm around her shoulders, her hand pressed to his wound, and started getting him down the stairs, making him recite software coding at her to keep him awake.

“You all right?” he asked, swallowing the guilt—the crushing, strangling guilt—that he was glad Rufus had been shot, and not her.

Lucy nodded. She was shaking and her skin looked pale underneath her mask but her gaze was firm. Resolute. “Let’s get this into the van.”

 

* * *

 

Jiya ignored Wyatt’s demands to know what was going on as she settled Rufus in the back, making him as comfortable as she could. “Stay with me,” she told him. “Stay with me, you idiot, or you don’t get to take me on a date on Friday.”

“I… what?” Rufus asked, momentarily distracted from the pain.

Jiya squeezed his hand. “I said, you have to live so you can take me on a date on Friday.”

Rufus stared up at her, uncomprehending, and Jiya laughed tiredly. “It’s been six months, Rufus, I figured if I kept waiting for you we’d make first contact with the aliens before you ever got around to asking me.”

She massaged his hand, wishing she could take the pain away as Rufus grit his teeth and tried not to let her see how much it was affecting him. “I shouldn’t have gotten you into this. It was my pride, Mason was offering to pay but I wanted to—I didn’t want to feel like I owed anyone—”

“You need someone to bypass the safe and the security,” Rufus said, his voice strained. “That’s—what I’m here for. You don’t have to apologize.” He managed a grin. “And hey how else was I supposed to impress you?”

Jiya tried for a laugh and only partly succeeded.

The back of the van opened and Lucy and Flynn dumped the last of the money bags—literal money bags, that was never going to stop being surreal for Jiya—and jumped in. Flynn climbed through to the front seat. “Take the usual route, there should be a hospital on the way, I’m pulling it up on maps.”

“Police will be here in forty seconds,” Lucy said, checking her watch. “We can’t go to a hospital too close by, the moment they hear from Keynes that someone was shot they’ll start looking, and the bullet in Rufus will be a match for the one fired in the gun.”

“Can’t match a bullet to a gun they can’t find,” Flynn said, holding up the gun in question.

Wyatt and Lucy both stared at him in a way that Jiya immediately recognized as unreserved lust.

Flynn, of course, didn’t notice. Jiya had seen Flynn miss hints from his wife of seven years about how she wanted him to please fuck her, so she wasn’t surprised that he was missing stares of thirst from two people he’d known for three months.

“I’ll find us a hospital further away,” Flynn said, obliviously typing on his phone as he set the gun down. “I’ll dump the gun after we unload the cash and distribute it.”

Wyatt put the van into drive. “Put pressure on his wound, Jiya, and hang on.”

Jiya grit her teeth against the sound of Rufus’s pained groan as the van shot out into the street. Cops were twenty seconds away. Rufus was a black man. And he’d been shot.

Possibly the worst combination of events, but dammit. Rufus was making it out of this night alive, even if she had to dig the fucking bullet out herself.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt kept the van running as Jiya and Flynn lurched out of it with Rufus, carrying him into the hospital. Flynn slipped a wad of cash into Jiya’s pocket as Jiya screamed for help, her boyfriend’s been shot, somebody help, and then Flynn slipped out a side door and jogged around to hop back into the van.

Lucy had a death grip on Wyatt’s shoulder that didn’t let up as Flynn got back into the front passenger seat—she just started gripping Flynn’s shoulder with her other hand and kept an eye on the time. “We need to be out of the perimeter in forty-five seconds.”

“I can do it in thirty,” Wyatt assured her, gunning it and following the route burned into his mind. The police would be establishing a perimeter, and they had to be on the other side of it before the noose was complete.

Driving was the one thing he was innately good at. Shooting, fighting, he’d gotten good at that through training. But ever since he was little and his old man was making him fix up the car, he’d felt like sitting behind the wheel was what he’d been born for.

Maybe he should’ve been a racecar driver or something and just called it a day.

Lucy’s grip finally loosened as they pulled into the warehouse, money safely in the back, ready to be distributed into four shares (Rufus had insisted he didn’t need any).

Wyatt parked the van and put his hand over Lucy’s. “You can breathe now.”

Lucy sucked in a great gulp of air and then practically clawed her way out of the van. “Sorry,” she explained, jumping out the back as Wyatt and Flynn emerged from the front. “Claustrophobia.”

Flynn nodded. “Go get some water, Wyatt and I will start unloading.”

They had to do some fancy dancing with this now to explain it on their taxes and all that, but Jiya and Rufus had promised them they could take care of that. Rufus had some friend of his, a mentor, who ran a big company and knew how to do that shit all the time.

Yay for capitalism.

Wyatt had just grabbed the first bag when he heard Lucy scream.

He whipped around, heart in his throat—

And saw some tall redhead walking towards him, Lucy held in front of her, a gun pointed right at Lucy’s temple.

“Who the fuck are you?” Wyatt demanded.

“I’m the woman taking what she’s owed,” the redhead replied. “Y’know, I gotta say, I was pissed when I saw you three were doing my job, but then I figured, hey, why not let you do the dirty work?”

“It’s not your job,” Lucy hissed. “It’s Lorena’s job and it’s my job. I came up with it, with her, it was our thing.”

“Just put the gun down,” Flynn said slowly, his voice even, “and we can talk. There’s no need to get violent.”

Wyatt could see the same fear in Flynn’s eyes that he felt in his chest. One twitchy finger and Lucy would be gone. After Jess, after all of them had just lost someone—Wyatt didn’t want to lose another person, and he knew Flynn didn’t either. For all Flynn pretended to hold it together, Wyatt knew he was drowning same as the rest of them.

The woman smirked. “Right. And let you two boys rush me? I don’t think so. You’re going to leave that money where it is, and you, pretty boy, are going to toss me the keys. Or Bonnie here gets it.”

A strange look came over Flynn’s face. “You’re Emma, aren’t you?”

The redhead flashed him a barracuda smile. “The one and only. What gave it away?”

“The bodies in the van were too charred to identify, we had to go by dental records,” Flynn said.

Wyatt winced. That had been… fun.

“And y’know, I thought it strange at the time that the whole thing had caught fire. Who put those tanks so near the van? And how did it all go so wrong? And there was only one new person involved, one person that Lorena hadn’t worked with before. And Karl—Karl got sick rather suddenly, and he’s only communicated with me through emails since, but I trust him so I never thought he was the traitor and it never occurred to me that it’s… very easy to pretend to be someone else over email, isn’t it? Very easy to swap out dental records if you know who to bribe.”

“Wait.” Wyatt gestured at Emma. “Are you saying she killed Karl—that she set them—” Rage boiled in him. “You killed my wife, you son of a—”

“Ah ah ah,” Emma said, pointing her gun at him. “I heard you could get mouthy. Jess said she liked it when you got like that in bed, when you got like that in public, not so much.”

Wyatt started forward and Flynn yanked him back. “Don’t let her get to you, Wyatt, for Christ’s sake.”

“This is my job,” Emma insisted. “Now you let me take the money, and you get your girl. It’s simple.”

That was when Lucy’d clearly had enough of this.

She elbowed Emma hard in the stomach, then shouldered her in the arm, turning and jabbing her in the throat, snatching Emma’s gun.

“It’s _my_ job,” Lucy snapped.

She fired three times. Leg, stomach, and head.

Flynn took the gun from her, passing it to Wyatt who emptied the clip and set it aside as Lucy started to shake. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay, I’m here, you’re okay,” Flynn murmured, holding her tightly to his chest.

His eyes met Wyatt’s over Lucy’s head and Wyatt nodded. He’d get the bags unloaded.

 

* * *

 

Amy looked up as the front door opened and Flynn entered, carrying Lucy, her head on his shoulder, another man Amy had never met before following behind. “Iris is in bed,” she said. “She was really great, but she told me I have to make you say goodnight to her now that you’re home.”

Flynn nodded. “Lucy’s had… a hard night. I was thinking I’d put her up in the bedroom, instead of making her go home. She lives across town with you, right?”

“Yeah, no, um, she looks out of it.”

Amy watched as Flynn tenderly carried her sister into the bedroom, took off her shoes and jacket, and tucked her in.

Huh.

The other guy was shuffling his feet like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I’m Wyatt,” he said offhandedly. “You must be Amy.”

“Yeah, I’m Lucy’s sister.” She shook his hand. “How’d everything go tonight?”

“It turned out okay in the end, and that’s what matters, right?” Wyatt asked, more like he was trying to convince himself than her.

Flynn emerged from the bedroom. “Thank you, Amy. How much do I—”

“Oh, no, it’s fine, you don’t have to pay me,” she said, holding up a hand. “Look, I don’t know what you’re all doing, but I know that for whatever reason, Lucy really—she really needs this. She wasn’t—she cared about Noah, but she wasn’t in love with him, not like he was in love with her. And whatever you guys are up to, I think for her it was a way to… to say sorry to him. For that. So. You guys are helping her move on and I appreciate that.” She narrowed her eyes at them. “Just don’t fuck it up, okay?”

“We won’t,” both men said hastily.

Amy grabbed her jacket. “Then I’m sure I’ll see her safe and happy tomorrow.”

Flynn and Wyatt both stared at her as she walked out the door, whistling.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt accepted the beer Flynn passed him with curiosity. “You don’t strike me as a beer guy.”

“Only occasionally. I prefer wine or scotch.”

“See, that tracks.”

Flynn rolled his eyes. “Lorena was the beer person.”

They stood in the kitchen, sipping their drinks, until Wyatt thought the silence might actually kill him.

“You were right,” he said. “About… you look good, in jeans.”

Flynn nearly choked on his beer and then chuckled.

Silence fell again as Wyatt picked at the label on his bottle. “If you… I mean. I don’t know why you would, I’m a mess, but if you did, I… um. I played it safe all my life. Ironic, given the whole Delta thing but. Yeah. Jess was always the one who took risks. I think maybe… now I should. I want to. Um. Do what you said. Appreciate the people I have and light a candle and all that shit. If that offer's still open.”

Flynn looked at him, put down his beer, and took Wyatt’s out of his hands, setting it on the counter. He took Wyatt’s wrist, and Wyatt thought he might actually faint from a combination of exhaustion, adrenaline, and nerves.

“Why are you two… it’s too big in there,” Lucy mumbled, emerging from the bedroom and rubbing at her eyes.

She’d taken her pants off at some point, leaving her in panties and her black long-sleeved shirt.

Wyatt tried not to stare at her legs.

“You get the bedroom to yourself,” Flynn pointed out.

“But I don’t want it to myself.” Lucy walked up—or rather lurched and shuffled up—and plunked her forehead onto Flynn’s chest. “I should’ve broken up with him,” she whispered. “I should’ve…” She yawned. “Said yes to Lorena.”

Wyatt didn’t know what that last part meant, but okay.

“Gonna demand tenure again tomorrow,” Lucy mumbled. “My job, my tenure meeting, my… life…”

“Mmmhmm,” Flynn said, gently petting her hair while simultaneously shooting Wyatt a panicked look.

Wyatt rolled his eyes and gestured for Flynn to hug her.

Flynn did so, looking the whole time like he expected Lucy to shank him for it. As if Wyatt hadn’t spent the last three months watching Lucy drool over Flynn every night.

Lucy reached out and took Wyatt’s wrist, right where Flynn had been gripping it a moment ago. “Come to bed,” she said. “Keep me warm.”

And fuck if there wasn’t something profound in that. _Come to bed. Keep me warm._

Or maybe that was just the evening catching up with him.

“I don’t care how much Jess loved it,” he said as he let Lucy lead him and Flynn into bed and arrange their limbs how she liked so that she could sleep on top of both of them before she passed out again. “We’re not doing that again.”

Flynn reached across, running his fingers through Wyatt’s hair, and if they’d still been standing up, Wyatt’s legs would have buckled. “No,” Flynn said softly. “We’re not.”

 

* * *

 

Flynn knew everything was okay.

Long before he got the text in the morning from Jiya saying that Rufus was out of surgery and on the mend. Long before Iris came in to wake him up and then asked why Papa had a sleepover without telling her. Long before he watched the sign get put up on his new firm’s office suite.

He opened his eyes, and had Lucy draped over his chest, her hair tickling his nose, and Wyatt sprawled out taking half the entire bed by himself like a starfish, unconsciously nuzzling up into Flynn’s hand, and he knew.

Everything was going to be okay.


End file.
